The Shoot Review - PS3

Introduction

Following in the footsteps of light-gun based series' such as Time Crisis, Cohort Studios (now defunct) went and released their own PlayStation Move powered take on the genre - The Shoot. Players take on the role of an action hero shooting his way through various movie sets. It's a decent premise, but is the game enjoyable?

Gameplay

The Shoot, as the name implies, tasks the player with shooting everything that moves. Well, everything that moves and doesn't have a smile on its face. The game's levels consist of various fictional movie sets which embody some classic movie genres, from Western, to Alien Invasion, to Horror Movie. The PlayStation Move motion controller serves as your gun, with players pointing it at the screen in order to aim. When you first start up the game, there's a calibration process to go through before you can properly get playing. Unfortunately it's not one of the best around. After a few attempts at getting the motion controller's accuracy just right, I finally managed to get it to work well enough for me to feel comfortable. The on-screen targeting reticule's movement was a little off, but not to a game-breaking degree.

There's not a lot to the game, really. It's not a mini-game compilation or anything similarly simple, but while there's nothing inherently wrong with the gameplay, there's far too little to do. Yes, there's a decent selection of movie sets to play though, but unfortunately, The Shoot is an on-rails shooter. So, you have the game slowly walking you through each level as you fire away at the multiple enemies that pop up or move across the screen. All you can do is aim and fire. That's about all there is to it, though at least there's a melee function, where you can flick the controller in order to physically hit the baddies. It's not all that useful, however. When you take this formula and add the fact that the enemies are literally cardboard cut-outs, moving around on strings, it doesn't do much to keep your interest. They have been given some very basic animation, but it's incredibly repetitive. It's a slightly humorous effect at first, but it quickly grows stale.

The game's main saving grace is the addition of special abilities, of which there are three. These are unlocked as you play through the game, and help to prop up the gameplay a little. The first ability is the rather clichéd slow-motion effect, which gives you more time to shoot all the enemies on-screen since they move far more slowly for a short period. Next up is the shockwave, which knocks out every enemy that is currently attacking you. The third ability is a rage mode which turns your pistol into a rapid-firing machine gun which will easily mow down everything in sight.

Multiplayer

The Shoot offers a two-player multiplayer mode for those of us who have a couple of Move controllers. The good news is that playing with a friend does make the game a little more interesting. ...